-The Hindu Now that the Supreme Court has upheld the constitutional validity of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, the Centre and the States must do their utmost to provide eight years of good quality schooling to all children. The unsuccessful challenge to the Act, which went into effect on April 1, 2010, came from unaided private school managements who are required to set apart 25...

The attack on corruption should not turn into disregard and contempt for institutions. The educated middle class in India is naturally exercised over the corruption that is widely prevalent in public life. With growing concern over corruption there is growing indignation. This indignation is expressed on various public occasions, sometimes passionately, but often in a purely routine manner. Every public institution and every public office, civil as well as military, is...

-The Hindu The Rajasthan Assembly on Thursday passed a significant anti-corruption legislation which would facilitate the Government to confiscate and attach any disproportionate property amassed by the corrupt public servants. The Rajasthan Special Courts Act, 2012 passed in the Assembly by a voice vote is modelled after existing legislations in the States of Bihar and Orissa. The legislation BRIngs everyone who draws salary from the Government, including the Chief Minister, under its...

I have never been to Brazil's "beautiful horizon", Belo Horizonte, the country's third-largest metropolitan area and an information and bio-technology hub, but I have followed the city's progress against what was once its enduring shame: hunger. In 1993, when 11% of its 2.5 million people lived in absolute poverty and a fifth of Belo's children went hungry, a newly-elected government declared that food was a fundamental right of every citizen,...

-PTI   A Jadavpur university professor was arrested today for allegedly posting a cartoon on the internet showing West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee in poor light after she forced out Dinesh Trivedi and put Mukul Roy in his place as railway minister.  The arrest of Ambikesh Mohapatra, a chemistry professor, sparked an outrage with opposition CPM and the academic community saying the police action is "highly atrocious" and a "clear assault" on...